5 ms·

Yeah, putting "K" in front of every app/product of yours is dumb, unlike that company who puts "i" in front of everything, that's genius. /s

scrollaway 5y ago
I'm a KDE long time user and contributor, and i agree with the GP's comment. Apple does it more sparingly (now), and fairly consistently: as a product line evolved. The iMac line did it when it was "cool", the iPod was the next one, and the iPhone evolved from the iPod so it made a lot of sense (and thus so did iOS). There's not really anything else Apple names this way. Apple TV, Macbook, Airpods, Safari... Whereas with KDE everything has got to have a K, it's pretty ridiculous. It's also not a particularly "pretty" letter and you end up with names that are either purposeful misspellings, midKapitalized, are plain bad puns, or occasionally and at best, are merely oKay. KDE does not have a great brand. Apple does.
- rascul 5y ago
  Currently Apple also has iPad, iCloud, iLife, iTunes, iMessage, iMovie, and iWork. Formerly, Apple had iDVD, iPhoto, iTools, iWeb, and iSight. It might also be interesting to note that Apple licenses iOS from Cisco [0]. [0] https://appleinsider.com/articles/10/06/08/cisco_licenses_ios_name_to_apple_screenshot_shows_iwork_on_iphone https://appleinsider.com/articles/10/06/08/cisco_licenses_io...
  - eddieroger 5y ago
    They also have MacBook Pro, Mac mini, Mac Pro, AppleTV (+), AirPods (Pro, Max), HomePod, Pencil, Watch, HomeKit, Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad, Smart Keyboard. Also, Apple no longer has iLife or iTunes, and "iWork" is no longer a bundle, but even if it was, its apps are Pages, Keynote and Numbers. No "i"s there. They use the "i" prefix more sparingly now, as the original post said.
    - abrowne 5y ago
      iBooks is now Books too.
  - lucideer 5y ago
    That sounds exactly like it was used sparingly: Apple have a lot more than 12 products. I've never heard of iLife, iTools, iWeb, iWork or iSight so its use in flagship products is even more sensibly sparing. iTunes has been replaced by Apple Music, and possibly iMovie too??? It's also worth noting Apple has been somewhat mocked got their overuse of i. Despite the sparing use. So KDE tacking it onto everything is even less sensible in this context. I think the K naming has probably hampered adoption of KDE products in the long term: I was always resistant to install K* apps when I was using a non-KDE desktop due to compatibility paranoia, something I tended not to even consider when installing gnome/gtk apps for example (which tend mostly not to be prefixed with g or gtk- or similar)
    - toyg 5y ago
      > That sounds exactly like it was used sparingly [...] iTunes has been replaced [...] , and possibly iMovie too The i-branding was very, very effective. Apple was one of the very few brands that really managed to "own" the internet in the mind of the average consumer. Which is one of the reasons it was wildly successful. The new branding, in comparison, is meh. They now just leverage "Apple". Nothing else, because they think they are too good. Creating new brands is difficult and risky, so they just don't do it because "we don't need it". It's a sign of decadence, and you can see it in the history of all corporate behemoths. Once Microsoft became huge, everything became "Microsoft This" or "Windows That" - they stopped making bets, and just leveraged their established brands. The rebirth was a fountain of fresh brands: Azure, Surface, Office365. "Apple Music" and "Apple TV" are one of the many symptoms of a culturally-dying corporation. Like Microsoft, they will continue to be fabulously rich for decades, maybe score the occasional win like the move to ARM. But the new booms will come from elsewhere.
      - lucideer 5y ago
        You're right but I think this is somewhat off-topic in this thread, as the alternative to the "decadence" and conservative nature of modern Apple would not be to continue using i*; it would would be to innovate in some new & different branding direction. Neither is what KDE are doing with their persistent k* prefix: it's not decadent nor innovative. It's just stagnant.
- tttechhh 5y ago
  Can't really grasp why an open-source project would need a great brand in the first place. The one thing that keeps me in the *nix universe is the ability to pick and choose my desired software (and hardware ofc) without being influenced by iMarketing. I really dont care if KDE has a poor brand as long as it does its job well.
  - Darmody 5y ago
    A good product without a good brand is almost useless. Good products have died because they failed to get enough attention. In this case. The more users and interest in KDE/Plasma, the better for the whole environment and the developers.
- dkdbejwi383 5y ago
  The i originally stood for "internet" when it was a new thing for the home user. The K in KDE stands for nothing in particular.
  - jtvjan 5y ago
    The K stands for kool!
    - dkdbejwi383 5y ago
      > The K was originally suggested to stand for "Kool", but it was quickly decided that the K should stand for nothing in particular. According to Wikipedia, however there is no citation.
      - jtvjan 5y ago
        Matthias Ettrich, the founder of KDE, called it that in this post: https://groups.google.com/g/de.comp.os.linux.misc/c/SDbiV3Iat_s https://groups.google.com/g/de.comp.os.linux.misc/c/SDbiV3Ia...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- chriswarbo 5y ago
  > Whereas with KDE everything has got to have a K, it's pretty ridiculous. Not really. The main desktop/interface, i.e. that users spend most time looking at, is called Plasma. The file manager, another high-usage application, is called Dolphin. The theme is Oxygen/Breeze. Claiming 'everything has got to have a K' is about a decade out of date. Sure there are still things like KClock, KRunner, KWin, etc. but they mostly seem to be very old projects, from back when 'everything has got to have a K'. Others, like Konqueror, Kontact, etc. seem like pretty reasonable names.
- simion314 5y ago
  >everything has got to have a K No longer true. But nobody wants to rename well known apps like Konsole to Terminal , Kate to "Text Editor".
- troyvit 5y ago
  I don't mind it. If I see something with a surprise K at the front or somewhere in it, I can assume it's a KDE product and I know where to go for support. Maybe it's annoying to everybody else but this branding makes my life simpler.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rimliu 5y ago
And which company is that? (I know you mean Apple, but Apple has iPhone and iPad, and that's it.)
- sseagull 5y ago
  Well, software/service names as well. iMessage, iCloud, iMovie. But I agree it is a little less standard than KDE putting K in front of everything
Longhanks 5y ago
That company has stopped doing that >5 years ago. Since then, launched products are simply called Apple Watch, Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Pencil, AirPods, AirTags... Also, the original comment did not say anything about Apple. Stop trolling.
teekert 5y ago
Klock would be better indeed!
- eldaisfish 5y ago
  If you follow the trend of KDE's naming scheme, you would expect KLock to be a lock, not a clock.
  - teekert 5y ago
    Like how I expect Kontact to be about ontacts and Konsole to offer me an onsole ;) (Sorry couldn't resist, I know many apps just have a normal name with a K prepended.)
- zanderz 5y ago
  Or Kronometer!
jorvi 5y ago
Apple doesn't call their apps iCalculator, iCamera, iContacts, iSettings, etc
- diffeomorphism 5y ago
  Neither does kde. That said, some/any name is vastly preferable to just "camera". If you have a question about the app how are you supposed to google for that? You start searching for "apple camera app" at which point that might as well be its name.
dennis_moore 5y ago
For someone who doesn't use KDE on my main distro it's great. It's a giveaway that I probably shouldn't apt-get that program. (Not that I have anything against KDE software, just the idea of installing it on non-KDE environments)
qudat 5y ago
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but being a copy cat does not make you innovative.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  Hum... Since the Apple trend is much more recent, the KDE developers should be very flattered. Anyway, the Keverything is a copy of the Xeverything, and both are for practical reasons since they point to the requirements to run the software.
jeroenhd 5y ago
Although the iSomething branding is equally stupid, I think you've also got a case of the Kiki-effect here[1]. The harsh k-sound is a lot less pleasing to use than the soft I-sound that prefixes Apple's products. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect

scrollaway 5y ago

I'm a KDE long time user and contributor, and i agree with the GP's comment. Apple does it more sparingly (now), and fairly consistently: as a product line evolved. The iMac line did it when it was "cool", the iPod was the next one, and the iPhone evolved from the iPod so it made a lot of sense (and thus so did iOS). There's not really anything else Apple names this way. Apple TV, Macbook, Airpods, Safari... Whereas with KDE everything has got to have a K, it's pretty ridiculous. It's also not a particularly "pretty" letter and you end up with names that are either purposeful misspellings, midKapitalized, are plain bad puns, or occasionally and at best, are merely oKay. KDE does not have a great brand. Apple does.

rascul 5y ago
Currently Apple also has iPad, iCloud, iLife, iTunes, iMessage, iMovie, and iWork. Formerly, Apple had iDVD, iPhoto, iTools, iWeb, and iSight. It might also be interesting to note that Apple licenses iOS from Cisco [0]. [0] https://appleinsider.com/articles/10/06/08/cisco_licenses_ios_name_to_apple_screenshot_shows_iwork_on_iphone https://appleinsider.com/articles/10/06/08/cisco_licenses_io...
- eddieroger 5y ago
  They also have MacBook Pro, Mac mini, Mac Pro, AppleTV (+), AirPods (Pro, Max), HomePod, Pencil, Watch, HomeKit, Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad, Smart Keyboard. Also, Apple no longer has iLife or iTunes, and "iWork" is no longer a bundle, but even if it was, its apps are Pages, Keynote and Numbers. No "i"s there. They use the "i" prefix more sparingly now, as the original post said.
  - abrowne 5y ago
    iBooks is now Books too.
- lucideer 5y ago
  That sounds exactly like it was used sparingly: Apple have a lot more than 12 products. I've never heard of iLife, iTools, iWeb, iWork or iSight so its use in flagship products is even more sensibly sparing. iTunes has been replaced by Apple Music, and possibly iMovie too??? It's also worth noting Apple has been somewhat mocked got their overuse of i. Despite the sparing use. So KDE tacking it onto everything is even less sensible in this context. I think the K naming has probably hampered adoption of KDE products in the long term: I was always resistant to install K* apps when I was using a non-KDE desktop due to compatibility paranoia, something I tended not to even consider when installing gnome/gtk apps for example (which tend mostly not to be prefixed with g or gtk- or similar)
  - toyg 5y ago
    > That sounds exactly like it was used sparingly [...] iTunes has been replaced [...] , and possibly iMovie too The i-branding was very, very effective. Apple was one of the very few brands that really managed to "own" the internet in the mind of the average consumer. Which is one of the reasons it was wildly successful. The new branding, in comparison, is meh. They now just leverage "Apple". Nothing else, because they think they are too good. Creating new brands is difficult and risky, so they just don't do it because "we don't need it". It's a sign of decadence, and you can see it in the history of all corporate behemoths. Once Microsoft became huge, everything became "Microsoft This" or "Windows That" - they stopped making bets, and just leveraged their established brands. The rebirth was a fountain of fresh brands: Azure, Surface, Office365. "Apple Music" and "Apple TV" are one of the many symptoms of a culturally-dying corporation. Like Microsoft, they will continue to be fabulously rich for decades, maybe score the occasional win like the move to ARM. But the new booms will come from elsewhere.
    - lucideer 5y ago
      You're right but I think this is somewhat off-topic in this thread, as the alternative to the "decadence" and conservative nature of modern Apple would not be to continue using i*; it would would be to innovate in some new & different branding direction. Neither is what KDE are doing with their persistent k* prefix: it's not decadent nor innovative. It's just stagnant.
tttechhh 5y ago
Can't really grasp why an open-source project would need a great brand in the first place. The one thing that keeps me in the *nix universe is the ability to pick and choose my desired software (and hardware ofc) without being influenced by iMarketing. I really dont care if KDE has a poor brand as long as it does its job well.
- Darmody 5y ago
  A good product without a good brand is almost useless. Good products have died because they failed to get enough attention. In this case. The more users and interest in KDE/Plasma, the better for the whole environment and the developers.
dkdbejwi383 5y ago
The i originally stood for "internet" when it was a new thing for the home user. The K in KDE stands for nothing in particular.
- jtvjan 5y ago
  The K stands for kool!
  - dkdbejwi383 5y ago
    > The K was originally suggested to stand for "Kool", but it was quickly decided that the K should stand for nothing in particular. According to Wikipedia, however there is no citation.
    - jtvjan 5y ago
      Matthias Ettrich, the founder of KDE, called it that in this post: https://groups.google.com/g/de.comp.os.linux.misc/c/SDbiV3Iat_s https://groups.google.com/g/de.comp.os.linux.misc/c/SDbiV3Ia...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
chriswarbo 5y ago
> Whereas with KDE everything has got to have a K, it's pretty ridiculous. Not really. The main desktop/interface, i.e. that users spend most time looking at, is called Plasma. The file manager, another high-usage application, is called Dolphin. The theme is Oxygen/Breeze. Claiming 'everything has got to have a K' is about a decade out of date. Sure there are still things like KClock, KRunner, KWin, etc. but they mostly seem to be very old projects, from back when 'everything has got to have a K'. Others, like Konqueror, Kontact, etc. seem like pretty reasonable names.
simion314 5y ago
>everything has got to have a K No longer true. But nobody wants to rename well known apps like Konsole to Terminal , Kate to "Text Editor".
troyvit 5y ago
I don't mind it. If I see something with a surprise K at the front or somewhere in it, I can assume it's a KDE product and I know where to go for support. Maybe it's annoying to everybody else but this branding makes my life simpler.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rimliu 5y ago

And which company is that? (I know you mean Apple, but Apple has iPhone and iPad, and that's it.)

sseagull 5y ago
Well, software/service names as well. iMessage, iCloud, iMovie. But I agree it is a little less standard than KDE putting K in front of everything

Longhanks 5y ago

That company has stopped doing that >5 years ago. Since then, launched products are simply called Apple Watch, Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Pencil, AirPods, AirTags... Also, the original comment did not say anything about Apple. Stop trolling.

teekert 5y ago

Klock would be better indeed!

eldaisfish 5y ago
If you follow the trend of KDE's naming scheme, you would expect KLock to be a lock, not a clock.
- teekert 5y ago
  Like how I expect Kontact to be about ontacts and Konsole to offer me an onsole ;) (Sorry couldn't resist, I know many apps just have a normal name with a K prepended.)
zanderz 5y ago
Or Kronometer!

jorvi 5y ago

Apple doesn't call their apps iCalculator, iCamera, iContacts, iSettings, etc

diffeomorphism 5y ago
Neither does kde. That said, some/any name is vastly preferable to just "camera". If you have a question about the app how are you supposed to google for that? You start searching for "apple camera app" at which point that might as well be its name.

dennis_moore 5y ago

For someone who doesn't use KDE on my main distro it's great. It's a giveaway that I probably shouldn't apt-get that program. (Not that I have anything against KDE software, just the idea of installing it on non-KDE environments)

qudat 5y ago

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but being a copy cat does not make you innovative.

marcosdumay 5y ago
Hum... Since the Apple trend is much more recent, the KDE developers should be very flattered. Anyway, the Keverything is a copy of the Xeverything, and both are for practical reasons since they point to the requirements to run the software.

jeroenhd 5y ago

Although the iSomething branding is equally stupid, I think you've also got a case of the Kiki-effect here[1]. The harsh k-sound is a lot less pleasing to use than the soft I-sound that prefixes Apple's products. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect